<h1>2B. Develop a formal monitoring plan</h1>
<h2>Audiences and Information Needs</h2>
<p>The first part of developing your <strong>Monitoring Plan</strong> involves specifying your audience and
their <strong>information needs</strong>. Effective monitoring uses the minimum amount of financial and
human resources to provide you with the minimum information needed to determine if your
project is on track and what to do if you are not. All too often project teams either collect no
information or too much information because they are unsure of what is needed. As a first
step, you should be clear about for whom you are doing the monitoring. For example, are
you monitoring to satisfy external demands for accountability? While this may be part of the
reason behind monitoring, it ideally should not be your only or even your primary reason. In
the spirit of adaptive management, you should conduct monitoring to serve the needs of the
project and project team, helping the team learn from experience and integrate those lessons
into current and future programming. The following table lists some common audiences and
their general information needs.</p>
<h2>Table 1. Common Monitoring Audiences and Their Information Needs</h2>
<table border=1><td><strong>Audience</strong></td><td><strong>Typical Information Needs/Interests</strong></td>
<tr><td>Project team</td><td>How is the project progressing; What is working and what is not and why; How
to improve the project</td>
<tr><td>Project partners</td> <td>How is the project progressing; What is working and what is not and why; How
to improve the project</td>
<tr><td>Donors</td> <td>How is the project progressing</td></tr>
<tr><td>Communities or
stakeholders
affected</td>
<td>How is the project progressing; How will the project impact them</td></tr>
<tr><td>Conservation
community</td>
<td>What is working, what is not, and why</td></tr>
<tr><td>Academics and
students</td>
<td>What is working, what is not, and why</td></tr></table>
<p>Once you know for whom you are monitoring, you need to then identify what you want to
know (your <strong>learning questions</strong>) and what you should monitor. By focusing your monitoring
efforts squarely on the core assumptions you have made in your project (illustrated in your
results chains that link your goals, objectives, and strategies), you are more likely to collect
only the information that will be useful to you and your monitoring audiences as you manage
your project.</p>
<h2>Indicators and Methods</h2>
<p>Once you have identified your audiences and their information needs, the next step is to
develop the specific indicators you will use to collect and analyze the data required to meet
your information needs. Good indicators meet the criteria of being <i>measurable, precise,
consistent, and sensitive</i>.</p>
<p>Your results chains, along with their corresponding goals and objectives, provide you with
the basis for identifying what you need to measure and what indicators you should use. By
developing results chains and setting good goals and objectives, you have narrowed down a
nearly infinite set of potential indicators to a very manageable set.  
Remember, you should aim to collect the least amount of
information to show that your project is making progress. Thus, for the most part, you will
want to limit the indicators you monitor to those that correspond to your results chains.</p>
<p>After developing your indicators, you need to think about how you will measure them -- in
other words, what <strong>methods</strong> you will use. Methods vary in their <i>accuracy and reliability,
cost-effectiveness, feasibility, and appropriateness</i>. The key is to select the most costeffective
method that will give you data that is reliable enough to meet your management
needs. For many information needs, you may not have to collect primary data. For example,
one method for collecting data about a given fish population would be to "download harvest
records posted by a government agency on the Internet." Finally, you should also determine
roughly when, where, and by whom data will be collected, and how data will be analyzed and
used. In developing your Monitoring
Plan, it is best to test and adjust indicators and methods before using them. You should also
plan for how you will store and process each type of data in advance, and formally budget for
monitoring activities in your overall financial planning (See Steps 3 and 4 for more
information about managing data and budgeting for monitoring).</p>
Outputs for this standard practice include a formal monitoring plan that contains:
<ul><li>Audiences and their associated information needs clearly defined.</li>
<li>Indicators defined.</li>
<li>Finalized Monitoring Plan.</li></ul>
